Hospice Patients Alliance affirms that all human life is inherently valuable and that the role of hospice nurses, physicians and all other staff is to alleviate suffering and provide comfort for the sick and dying without sanctioning or assisting their suicide. A death with dignity allows for a natural death in its own time, while doing everything possible to assure relief from distressing symptoms.

" The opposite of love is not hate, but indifference;
the opposite of beauty is not ugliness, but indifference;
the opposite of learning is not ignorance, but indifference;
Hatred cannot be anything but evil.
Hatred contaminates me.
We cannot give in to hatred;
To preserve humanity we must fight indifference."

Note: This picture is meant to caution the public about hospices that betray the original hospice mission and that involuntarily euthanize patients, most commonly through overdosages of morphine and other opioid medications, or through the inappropriate use of terminal sedation to place a patient into a coma from which they are not allowed to awake: they die from dehydration in less than two weeks. Some hospices are not hastening the deaths of patients, but many are. We regularly receive complaints from family members (from all over the USA) reporting such involuntary hastened deaths!
Hospice Patients Alliance supports the original hospice mission which is to relieve suffering at the end-of-life, but never to hasten death, allowing for death in its own natural timing. See the HPA "Hospice Life Pledge."

Like those hauled off to Auschwitz, the vulnerable elderly, severely disabled and chronically ill are being killed in large numbers. These vulnerable citizens suffer and die in their own silent Holocaust, a Holocaust that is invisible to the public, because it is hidden behind the wall of "privacy laws" that protect the killers, but do not protect the patients. My article entitled, "The Invisible Holocaust" is available in the Spring, 2007 edition of Celebrate Life Magazine.

We need to understand that the Euthanasia Society of America, formed in 1938 changed its name several times as it "morphed" in order to make itself more "palatable" to the American public. It changed names, merged with other organizations, but always kept its goal in mind. The leaders of the organization told followers to "walk, don't run" as they made incremental steps to changing how Americans think about dying, and especially about imposed death ("euthanasia"), assisted-suicide and hospice's own brand of euthanasia, "terminal sedation" used to impose death through dehydration. This hospice way of ending life is called the Third Way and gets around formal decisions to euthanize a patient or assist in a suicide by providing a lethal medication. It is being done widely in American hospices, but not all.

Was your loved one killed, against his or her will, through the use of narcotics and sedatives? Do you know of cases where chronically ill patients were shunted into hospices to be done away with? Was your loved one medically killed in a hospice? Write to Hospice Patients Alliance with a brief summary of the facts involved. Let us know if you are willing to work together to stop illegal medical killings of patients. Thanks!

For those who are reluctant to speak about a medical killing of someone they knew, something to think about: if every child and adult who knows that child molestation is occuring kept silent, what would happen? ... if every woman who had been raped kept silent, what would happen? ... if every witness to a crime kept silent, would there be any justice? ... would there be any punishment for those who commit crimes? Can there be a stop to involuntary killings if people keep silent? As Professor Elie Wiesel says, "To preserve humanity we must fight indifference."

Here are examples in a family's own words (modified to maintain confidentiality) of how staff in some hospices have medically killed their patients:

It only takes one "bad apple" who has an agenda of euthanizing patients for involuntary euthanasias to occur. It is quite easy for such a nurse, physician or other staff to impose his or her own will on those most vulnerable. Falsifying the medical record has been reported in these types of cases. Staff may record that a patient with no pain actually had pain, thereby seeking to justify in the record the administration of high levels of narcotics. Families report patients being forced to take morphine and other narcotics when the patient directly refused to do so and stated they had no pain at all. Those "bad apples" with an agenda can tarnish the image of an otherwise excellent hospice program, and devastate the lives of the families whose loved ones they euthanize without permission.

A nationwide letter writing campaign has begun to protest involuntary euthanasias of helpless patients in hospices. Please write to government officials who are responsible to see that laws are enforced. Almost every elected official will have "friends" who are connected with the local hospice in their home region. District Attorneys may personally know the doctors or nurses involved and therefore may be quite hesitant to act to investigate medical killings in hospice settings.

For medical killings in hospice settings to be prosecuted, the public will need to make sure the DAs and government representatives know that this is not going to be tolerated by the people of the USA! Let them know very clearly that you want these medical killings stopped, and that those medical killings which are reported should be prosecuted. "Angels of death" in hospices who violate laws must not be immune to prosecution for killing patients. Picketing the local county district attorney's office when they refuse to prosecute a killing in a health care setting should be happening all around our nation! The people must speak up!

You can also bring attention to this problem by calling local talk radio hosts. Keep on talking about this issue and keep writing till the government takes notice and changes their total suppression of this issue. Keep on working till the government takes definitive action. Some of us plan on writing regularly every month until Congressional Hearings are held; we hope you will join us in reporting your experience with hospices.

Do whatever you can, however small! Your actions do matter. It is only by becoming active that we can turn our nation around!

Please ask everyone you know to write as well, and to contact others to help in this vital effort. We can stop the termination of patients against their will. Hospices must no longer have a license to kill. Elderly, chronically ill, disabled and other patients must not be terminated against their will. Hospice agencies must no longer be killing fields. Patients and families must be able to trust that they will receive care, not termination!

Question: where would you go to be able to euthanize patients easily without detection if you had an agenda to put people out of their misery by euthanizing them? Would you go to a hospital where you could easily be detected, a nursing home where you might be detected, or a hospice where you would never be detected? Answer: Hospice!

There are "wolves" among the sheep, i.e., euthanizers among those who truly do provide compassionate hospice care. Not all hospice administrators are aware of what may be going on in their own hospice, and this should be a wake-up call to take a close look when families complain about their loved one being hastened to their death or medically killed.

In Germany, the Nazis first came for the communists, and I did not speak up, because I was not a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak up, because I was not a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak up, because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I did not speak up, because I was not a Catholic. Then they came for me... and by that time, there was no one to speak up for anyone. -- Martin Niemoeller, Pastor, German Evangelical (Lutheran) Church

In America, the pro-euthanasia groups now say (publicly) they favor the legalization of euthanizing the terminally ill who are willing and want to commit suicide (also called "Physician Assisted Suicide"). But in private, in their own seminars and organizational meetings, they advocate legalizing the euthanasia of the elderly, Alzheimer's patients, disabled and others who may find life difficult or have lost the sense of the meaning of their life. Many euthanasia advocates favor the legalization of euthanasia for the chronically ill and weak.

Euthanasia advocates also favor legalizing the euthanasia of the congenitally "defective" newborn who may have deformation of the body or mental retardation, even children with Downs syndrome, some of which have enough intelligence to go through high school and college with passing grades. Many families who have children with disabilities from birth know all too well how hospital staff (doctors, nurses and others) often advise them to let their babies die by withholding needed care.

Withholding needed care is a form of euthanasia. Those families with disabled children love their children and do not find their children's lives to be "meaningless." Who should get to decide who lives or who dies? Should the nurse or doctor at the bedside be allowed to become "judge, jury and executioner" all in one?

HMOs and health care corporations (in general) who provide care to patients have a financial incentive to favor the legalization of euthanasia for those patients who are not terminal, not elderly, but simply have the misfortune of having an expensive illness to treat. If euthanasia is legalized for patients in many categories, HMOs and health care corporations will be able to more easily euthanize anyone who is judged to be unworthy of life, defective in their judgment, or expensive to treat. Medical records are routinely falsified to cover up what is already going on. Think it's not possible? Families report that it has happened to their loved ones, against their wishes, right here in the USA.

If euthanasia advocates have their way with the laws of our nation, and people can be euthanized for so many reasons, our nation will no longer be the land of the free, but a land of people in fear of entering a hospice, hospital or nursing home. Illegal euthanasias of such patients are already being performed in our nation, quietly, behind the scenes, in the isolation of the nursing home, hospice and oncology wards in the hospitals.

The real news is not that one "angel of death" is prosecuted; the real news is that there are hundreds and thousands of angels of death in our nation, working quietly "underground," so to speak, and physicians and nurses know this is going on. The news is that many patients who are not actively dying are being killed, not cared for, in hospice agencies.

If you or your loved ones enter a hospice, hospital or nursing home, how will you be able to know that you or your loved one will not be euthanized? How can we trust the health care professionals ... nurses, doctors and aides, if some of them are quietly euthanizing patients against their will? When this practice is condoned (privately of course) by health care corporations and agencies, entering the health care system becomes a risk when it should be a place of compassion and caring.

Just as the press in Germany did not announce what the Nazis were doing at Auschwitz and other concentration camps, those who do euthanasias without the permission of the patient do not announce what they are doing; they cover it up and falsify medical records.

Involuntary euthanasias are similar to the deaths caused by the Nazis, except that they are done one by one and not all in one location. They are done where the public has no way of knowing that a patient was murdered, and families who cry out for help are mainly being ignored by the local District Attorneys and federal government. If all these patients were transferred to one location and exterminated against their will in one location, it would be called a massacre, and rightly so. Not only is killing patients against their will reprehensible, when patients are hastened to an untimely death in a hospice, it makes all hospices and their staff look bad. These untimely deaths must be stopped!

Something to think about: When commenting on proposition 161 which was a failed attempt at legalizing euthanasia in California in 1992, California's then Attorney General Daniel E. Lungren stated,

"This measure would result in some unknown savings due to decreased utilization of the state Medi-Cal program and other public programs, including county programs."

Yes, killing the patient does save money for the HMO, the hospice, and the government. Hospice care is less expensive than acute care services in a hospital. Real hospice care is humane. Killing the patient involuntarily is monstrous, but any form of euthanasia saves money as then Attorney General Lungren noted. Does this have any significance regarding widely reported inaction on the part of governments in prosecuting many medical killings which occur in hospices?